作者:TESSA BERENSON
唐纳德·特朗普决定在2016年参议院共和党席位选举中公布最高法院潜在候选人的短名单,这有助于说服许多保守
派支持他的竞选。当他走向连任时,他再次寻求将联邦法院变成一个热门话题。
最近几天,特朗普打破了司法部的传统,试图重新评估一项人口普查的决定,支持一项旨在推翻《平价医疗法案》的漫长诉讼,并在推特上批评对他不利的最高法院法官。
特朗普在推特上写道:“我早就听说最高法院法官的任命是总统最重要的决定。”。“太对了!”
特朗普自担任纽约房地产大亨以来就一直与法院纠缠不清,在30年的商业生涯中面临4095起诉讼。在2016年的竞选中,他袭击了一名美国地方法院法官,该法官在特朗普大学主持集体诉讼,指控他的种族欺诈,并无端猜测最高法院大法官安东宁·斯卡利亚(Antonin Scalia)被谋杀。
这种情况一直延续到他的总统任期,围绕几个穆斯林占多数的国家的旅行禁令展开了高风险的斗争,他参与了华盛顿特朗普国际酒店的活动,并试图结束针对无证移民的儿童移民延期行动计划。他还与首席大法官约翰·罗伯茨就是否应该将被任命者称为“奥巴马法官”的问题争吵不休。
特朗普寻求连任,试图将这些法律纠纷转化为红利,将法庭描绘成他议程上的一个障碍。
洛约拉法学院教授杰西卡·莱文森说:“他是在玩自己的游戏。”。“他试图将任何不同意他的法官塑造成一个危险的、未当选的、权力过大的人。”
最近的一场战斗发生在特朗普已经在最高法院落败之后,这通常是他的前任承认失败并继续前进的时候。
今年6月,最高法院阻止特朗普政府在人口普查中增加公民身份问题,罗伯茨和四名自由派法官一起参与了决定的关键部分。尽管有这一裁决,特朗普和司法部长威廉·巴尔继续试图找到一种方法来解决这个问题,甚至做出了完全取代为政府努力辩护的法律团队的非常不寻常的举动。
对一些人来说,这是特朗普把界限推得太远的信号。
莱文森说:“谈论最高法院的判决就好像它们是可选的,而不是强制性的,这越来越危险了。”。“如果你在总统和最高法院之间有一场斗争,而且最高法院已经发表了意见,那么总统是否会遵守这一裁决就成了一个问题,这就是我们的宪法的漏洞。”
但是特朗普的政治团队打赌继续战斗是值得的。
“大多数美国人同意特朗普总统的观点,即询问人们是否是公民才有意义,”当被问及竞选团队认为选民将如何应对人口普查斗争时,竞选团队的副新闻秘书萨拉·马修斯告诉时代周刊。“反对这一点的民主党人想向任何想进入这个国家的人开放我们的边界,现在他们甚至不想知道谁已经在这里了。”
特朗普与最高法院的另一场高调斗争是《平价医疗法案》,这可能证明这些法院挑战对总统来说是一把双刃剑。
2012年,最高法院在一项里程碑式的裁决中维持了法律的个人授权,该裁决也是罗伯茨和四名自由派法官领导的5比4裁决。(罗伯茨在这两项决策中的角色似乎是特朗普周二早上推特上愤怒的潜台词。)
但是巴拉克·奥巴马总统签署的医疗保健法,特朗普称之为“昂贵而可悲”,可能会再次提交给国家最高法院。新奥尔良的一家联邦上诉法院将于周二听取关于德克萨斯州的一名联邦法官否决《平价医疗法案》是否正确的辩论——特朗普欢呼这一决定。
根据上诉法院的决定,以及在2020年大选前,此案是否会提交最高法院,特朗普可能面临一些政治风险。如果奥巴马医改被推翻,或者即使他的政府只需要出庭,努力推翻一项保护有先前疾病的人并为数千万人提供健康保险的法律,他可能会承担美国人担心失去健康保险的政治后果。
支持这项法律的组织“保护我们的医疗保健”开始运行一个数字广告,其中部分内容是,“特朗普总统和共和党人本周在法庭上推翻了我们的医疗保健法律,剥夺了数百万美国人的医疗保健覆盖范围……这是唐纳德·特朗普的医疗保健计划。”
“在国会试图废除《平价医疗法案》失败两年后,总统。参议院最高民主党人之一伊利诺伊州参议员迪克·德宾在推特上写道:“特朗普现在正试图通过法庭破坏法律。”。"如果共和党得逞,数百万美国人将失去他们的医疗保险."
但特朗普2016年的经历似乎表明,与法官的斗争奏效了。斯卡利亚于2016年2月去世后,特朗普与保守派法律顾问协商,并在参议院多数党领袖米奇·麦康奈尔(Mitch McConnell)的支持下,与选民达成了前所未有的协议:他公布了一份法官名单,并承诺从名单中提名一人填补斯卡利亚的席位。全国出口民调显示,21%的选民表示最高法院的任命是他们决定中“最重要的因素”,这些选民强烈支持特朗普。特朗普阵营中的许多人将他2016年的胜利归功于
他的名单,一些政治专家认为他对法庭的持续重视将继续推动他。共和党民意测验专家弗兰克·伦茨(Frank Luntz)在推特上写道:“右倾选民比左倾选民更关心最高法院,这让特朗普在2020年获得了重大优势——即使是在原本讨厌他的保守派选民中也是如此。”。
普林斯顿大学历史和公共事务教授朱利安·泽利泽说,现在,迈向2020年,特朗普“将把法庭作为陪衬,就像保守派在20世纪60年代指责沃伦法庭一样”。但是,泽利泽指出,“他的言辞比前任总统尖锐得多。”
For Donald Trump, Courts Are Another 2020 Battleground
BY TESSA BERENSON
Donald Trump’s decision to release a shortlist of potential Supreme Court nominees in the 2016
election for a seat held open by Senate Republicans helped persuade many conservatives to support his campaign. As he heads into re-election, he is again seeking to turn federal courts into a hot topic.
In recent days, Trump has broken with Department of Justice tradition in an attempt to relitigate a decision on the Census, thrown his support behind a longshot lawsuit attempting to overturn the Affordable Care Act and taken to Twitter to criticize Supreme Court justices who have ruled against him.
“I have long heard that the appointment of Supreme Court Justices is a President’s most important decision,” Trump tweeted. “SO TRUE!”
Trump has tangled with courts since his days as a New York real estate mogul, facing 4,095 lawsuits over three decades in business. During the 2016 campaign, he shocked the legal establishment with attacks on a U.S. District Court judge presiding over class-action lawsuits over fraud at Trump University over his ethnicity and baseless speculation that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was murdered.
That’s continued into his presidency, with high-stakes fights over a travel ban on several majority
Muslim countries, his involvement with the Trump International Hotel in Washington and his attempt to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program for undocumented immigrants. He’s also feuded with Chief Justice John Roberts over whether he should refer to appointees as “Obama judges.”
As he seeks a second term in the White House, Trump has sought to turn these legal tangles into a bonus, painting the courts as an obstacle to his agenda.
“He’s playing to his base,” says Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School. “He is
trying to style any judge who doesn’t agree with him as a dangerous, un-elected individual who is wielding too much power.”
The most recent fight comes after Trump has already lost at the Supreme Court, typically a point
where his predecessors would concede defeat and move on.
In June, the Supreme Court blocked the Trump Administration from adding a citizenship question to the Census, with Roberts joining the four liberal justices in the key part of the decision. Despite
the ruling, Trump and Attorney General William Barr have continued trying to find a way to include the question, even making the highly unusual move of completely replacing the legal team defending the Administration’s efforts.
For some, that’s a sign that Trump is pushing the boundaries too far.
“It’s increasingly dangerous to talk about Supreme Court decisions as if they’re optional, as
opposed to mandatory,” says Levinson. “If you have a fight between the president and the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court has spoken, and there’s a question as to whether the president will follow that ruling, that is where our Constitution tears apart at the seams.”
But Trump’s political team is betting that continuing the fight is worth it.
“Most Americans agree with President Trump that asking if people are citizens just makes sense,” Sarah Matthews, the campaign’s deputy press secretary, told TIME when asked how the campaign thinks voters will respond to the Census fight. “Democrats opposing this want to open our borders to anyone who wants to come into the country, and now they don’t even want to know who’s already here.”
The other high-profile fight Trump is picking with the Supreme Court is over the Affordable Care
Act, which could prove these court challenges are a double-edged political sword for the president.
In 2012, the Supreme Court upheld the law’s individual mandate in a landmark ruling that was also a 5-4 decision led by Roberts and the four liberal justices. (Roberts’ role in both of these
decisions seemed to be a subtext of Trump’s anger in his Tuesday morning tweets.)
But President Barack Obama’s signature health care law, which Trump called Tuesday “expensive & pathetic,” could once again come before the nation’s highest court. A federal appeals court in New Orleans will hear arguments Tuesday about whether a federal judge in Texas was correct in striking down the Affordable Care Act — a decision Trump cheered.
Depending on what the appeals court decides, and whether the case works its way up to the Supreme Court before the 2020 election, Trump could face some political risks. If Obamacare is struck down, or even if his government just needs to appear in court fighting to overturn a law that protects people with preexisting conditions and currently gives tens of millions of people health insurance, he might own the political fallout of Americans worried about losing their health insurance.
Protect Our Care, a group that supports the law, began running a digital ad that says in part, “President Trump and Republicans are in court this week to strike down our health care laws and rip away coverage from millions of Americans… This is Donald Trump’s health care plan.”
“Two years after trying & failing to repeal the Affordable Care Act through Congress, Pres. Trump is now trying to destroy the law through the courts,” tweeted Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, one of the top Democrats in the Senate. “If the GOP has their way, millions of Americans will lose their health coverage.”
But Trump’s 2016 experience seemed to show that fighting with judges worked. After Scalia died in February of 2016, Trump, in consultation with conservative legal advisors and with the support of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, made an unprecedented pact with voters: He released a list of judges and promised to nominate someone from that list to fill Scalia’s seat. National exit polls showed that 21% of voters said the Supreme Court appointment was “the most important factor”
in their decision, and those voters strongly favored Trump. Many in Trump’s orbit credit his list
with sealing his 2016 victory, and some political experts think his continued emphasis on the court will continue to boost him. “Right-leaning voters care more about the Supreme Court than left-leaning voters, which gives Trump a major advantage in 2020 – even amongst conservative voters who otherwise hate him,” tweeted Republican pollster Frank Luntz.
Now, heading into 2020, Trump “will use the court as a foil, the same way conservatives used to
rail against the Warren Court in the 1960s,” says Julian Zelizer, professor of history and public
affairs at Princeton University. But, Zelizer notes, “His rhetoric is much more pointed than
previous presidents.”
